


Star Wars Drabbles

by Yalbi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:49:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yalbi/pseuds/Yalbi
Summary: Drabbles of varying genres and ratings, all under 500 words each.





	1. I've a Feeling We're Not on Tatooine Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> wow, i haven't posted a star wars fic in *checks own works page* three years! so hopefully this'll be fun and not absolutely terrible
> 
> enjoy! maybe!
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT 9/5/17: i have no idea if i'll actually write a hundred of these

Luke has to stop and stare when he steps onto Yavin 4.

It’s nothing like Tatooine. Tatooine’s dry, all flat desert and rock, and sometimes he could go weeks seeing as many different people as he can count on both hands. But here—here it’s moisture clinging to the air, it’s trees blocking the sky, it’s people and droids moving and bustling and hurrying and crowding his vision, and the idea that a place like this exists in the galaxy stuns him. 

But more importantly (more than the people, or the trees, or the water the wetness surrounding him implies), Yavin 4 is hope. It’s the hope the galaxy has ached for made physical, given form in the beings whose faith and belief in their cause is almost palpable. It’s the convergence of dreams of freedom, gathered from countless systems and worlds. And he—a Tatooinian farmboy, of all people—is here now to take it all in, to stand at the cusp of something great and auspicious.

“Hey, kid,” he hears Han say at his side, and he drags himself out of the crowd to look at him. Han seems more amused than concerned when he asks, “You okay there?”

Luke lets out a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m just…” He glances around as though he’ll find the word waiting for him, hidden among the innumerable rebels. “… Overwhelmed.”

“Yeah, well,” Han says, heaving quite the impressively nonchalant shrug. “Once you’ve seen one jungle moon, you’ve seen them all.”

And Luke wants to argue against that, wants to get Han to understand what he understands and see what he sees, but he notices the slightest flash of awe in Han’s eyes as he takes a long, sweeping glance around and decides, with a small grin, that he already does.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many jungle moons have you been to, han


	2. Prize

They had battled, and Orson had won.

They had fought—fists hitting, bones crunching, blood spilling, years and years and years spent in a long, long war—and yes, Lyra had proven to be quite the opponent, but she’s the one whose body lies forgotten on an equally irrelevant planet.

She’s the one who had lost.

And Orson—he feels relief, he feels victory, he feels waves of pure _triumph_ pound through his veins. He can’t help the grin he flashes at Galen, and if Galen looks away to hide his reddening eyes—well. It doesn’t matter.

Because he is the prize they had battled for.

And he is the prize Orson had won.

 


	3. Kaeden/Ahsoka – Thunderstorm

She is, quite simply, the most beautiful woman Kaeden has ever seen. She’d arrived on parched Raada like a thunderstorm after a drought: unexpected and jolting, but not unwelcome. Refreshing, even. During those early days, when Kaeden had brought broken droids to her and taken fixed ones from, she had spent as much time as she could spare just drinking her in, just letting the cool breeze she blessed Raada with lift the stifling heat around her.

And like a thunderstorm, she’d brought lightning—great white-hot streaks that struck the ground at Kaeden’s feet, coming so, so close to ripping through her body and destroying her. She spoke lies, hiding behind a false name; she kept her past away, but not well enough; she did nothing as Kaeden’s friends, people she’d known her whole life, died; and she ran—they all did, from the only home they’d known, and she led them away to never return.

A thunderstorm: rain, the wind, a break in a perpetual dryness that left Kaeden shriveled; lightning, death, unpredictability. But she was—is—more. She is power, concealed but whispering from her gait, her muscles, her eyes; courage, dripping from every word she says; freedom, a hope for a future unmarred by tyrants and the apathetic, open to any and all who ask to partake of it—

And beauty. Ahsoka Tano is beauty, and she is, quite simply, the most beautiful woman Kaeden Larte has ever seen.

 


	4. Krennic/Galen – Smooth, Orson. Real Smooth.

Orson looks at Galen, cocking an eyebrow in a sort of amused disbelief. “Galen, honestly,” he sighs, rolling onto his side on the bunk. “If I don’t drag you out somewhere, then you’re sitting in here, doing _homework_.” Then he adds, for emphasis, “On a _weekend_.”

Galen, for his part, doesn’t glance back from the desk he’s sitting at. His eyes are glued on the datapad and flimsi in front of him as he hums a distracted, “Hmm, is that so?”

“Yes, it is!” Orson exclaims exasperatedly. He slides off the bunk and walks smoothly to him, placing his hands on Galen’s shoulders and leaning his head over one of them. “Come on, let’s go out. Just you and me? I mean, you don’t _have_ to do that homework, do you?”

Galen makes an incredulous sound, but at least he’s not staring at the datapad anymore. “Well—yes, I do, Orson,” he says, turning his head enough to glance at him. “It’s required, if you didn’t know. It’s kind of the whole point.”

“Sure, sure,” Orson says dismissively, but he smirks—he knows this homework is a core requirement course, and even though Galen doesn’t complain about it, it’s obvious he just wants the course over and done with.

So he lets his voice lower, just the slightest bit. “But… do you _want_ to do it?”

Galen, tellingly, hesitates. “Well, I…,” he says, whatever reasoning he was about to explain left forgotten as Orson slowly starts running his hands from his shoulders and down his chest.

“Or,” Orson says, bringing his mouth close to Galen’s ear, “would you rather do me instead?”

The haste with which Galen shuts off the datapad is completely unsurprising.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn i wish i were as smooth as krennic


	5. Leia/Evaan – Dance

“Is that what I think it is?” Leia asks as she enters the cockpit.

Evaan turns to her with a grin, letting the soft notes of an Alderaanian slow waltz drift over them. “It is,” she says. “I managed to find a recording, but you know how much the Empire’s tried to scrub our culture from existence.” Her smile becomes a bit pained. “It was much more difficult to find than it should’ve been.”

Leia nods, her lips drawn tight, but she moves farther into the cockpit. Her expression mellows into one of wistful nostalgia as she listens to the past. “I haven’t thought about this piece in… well, years, actually,” she says eventually, a slight pang of guilt striking her. “It was my mother’s favorite. She had this played at every function we hosted.”

“I know,” Evaan says, her grin widening at a memory. “We—all of her students—had to learn the dance that came with it.” Then she looks at Leia with a mischievous questioning. “I’m assuming the crown princess learned it, too?”

A small smile tugs at Leia’s lips. “Of course,” she replies.

Evaan, eyes on her, steps into what Leia recognizes as the starting position of the dance. “Then may I have this dance,” she says, hand outstretched, a playful glint in her eye, “Your Highness?”

And Leia, a laugh flowing out of her, takes Evaan’s hand and follows her lead.

 


	6. Rub a Dub Dub, Three Fulcrums in a Pub

“I have to admit, I never expected an ISB agent to be Fulcrum,” Ahsoka says, wrapping her fingers around her Corellian rum.

Kallus tries to look casual as he shrugs—a gesture he’s still not quite comfortable with. “Well, it wasn’t easy,” he says. He takes a sip of some Rodian liquor and manages not to spit it up; he’s never drunk any alcohol from worlds beyond the Inner Rim, and he’s completely unprepared for how it burns his throat. His voice takes on a gravelly quality as he says, “There was a lot of distrust in the beginning, from both sides.”

Vis-à-vis him, Cassian nods knowingly, lowering his own traditional Festian beer onto the table. “That’s to be expected, unfortunately,” he says, and then glances at the KX droid standing guard at the entrance. “But ex-Imperials can be some of the best allies you can ask for.” 

Kallus’s lips twitch into a smile. He doesn’t know if it’s this Rodian stuff, but his grin actually feels genuine—something else, he supposes, he’ll have to get used to.

 


	7. Prank Calls

Mon keeps her face straight as Senator Ro-Kiintor’s voice floods out of the audio comm. “What, who is this?” he demands. “I told my secretary absolutely _no_ calls—”

“I’m sorry for the intrusion, Senator, but I have a pertinent question to ask you,” she replies, ignoring Sinjir’s repeatedly muttered, _Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god_. “Is your conservator running, Senator?”

“ _What?_ ” Ro-Kiintor exclaims. “ _Yes_ , my conservator is running, but—”

“Then you better go catch it!” Mon quickly shouts. She bursts out laughing the instant she cuts the connection off, the colorful drink in her hand sloshing around as she guffaws.

Sinjir barely has his own laughter under control, his body shaking from the sheer force of it, and he spills some rather expensive Chandrilan wine on the floor. “Oh my god, oh my _god_ ,” he says again, wiping tears out of his eyes. “You—Mon, you’re the—you’re the _chancellor_ of the blasted _New Republic_ and you— _oh my god_.”

“I know!” she practically squeals. That sets off another round of incredibly loud, incredibly boisterous, incredibly drunken laughter, and Sondiv just puts her head in her hands, wondering why she took this job in the first place.

 


	8. Resting Place

It’s gruesome but necessary. There is simply no other option at his disposal—out here, in the middle of the desert, no signs of life for miles and miles and miles—and so he gently rests Maul’s body on the ground, stands, his knees creaking, and starts carving out a hole in the sand.

He’d rather not do this. He’d rather not leave Maul to decay on this dry, forbidding planet, trapped under pounds of heavy sand. He’d rather not let his body succumb to nature and scavengers and whatever ever else may come. Maul was, after all, a victim of the same machinations that had killed the Jedi and brought Sidious to power; he’d had little choice in all this. Still, he stops himself from thinking about how unfortunate it is that Maul never learned the techniques Qui-Gon had taught him; it’s likely for the best that he hadn’t.

He judges the hole—the grave—deep enough, and slowly, with purpose, places the body inside. How strange it is, he thinks as he begins to pile sand over red and black, that only moments earlier Maul had prepared to kill him, to take revenge for a crime Maul believed he’d committed a lifetime ago. Well, Maul may not have had his revenge, but at the very least, he is free from the chains of anger that had bound him.

He covers up the last of him, the final grains of sand trickling onto the ground. He stands again, his knees creaking once more, and looks at the patch of desert that will forever mark the resting place of his greatest adversary. And then he turns around and walks away.

 


	9. *Thrawn Voice* You Had One Job

Pryce closes her eyes, swallows her fear, and, for a moment, takes a step back.

The battle was lost. There is simply no ignoring the reality of that. The rebels had suffered heavy losses, had seen so many of their numbers die, and their base is now ash and dust—but they had survived. Against all odds—against the strongest military force the galaxy had ever faced, against the sharpest minds the Empire could cull—they had lived just long enough to flee. The _where_ of that equation is still unknown, but it doesn’t matter; the rebels will find a place to regroup, to strengthen, to rally their forces and poison others to join them.

And she let them. Thrawn had entrusted her with this one, simple task and _she let them_.

She stops, takes a shaky breath, and makes herself move forward.

Objectively, the Imperial side had fared better. One Interdictor and its commander: lost. Another: salvageable. Star Destroyers: all operational. Troopers and TIE fighters: innumerable dead, but the Empire can easily replace them. Numbers are no object.

And, of course, Thrawn is alive; he’s as expendable as the rest of them, but he’s proven himself useful enough to rise so high in the ranks in spite of his… outsider status. And _she_ is alive as well, ready, as always, to fight another battle for their Empire. But…

But _Kallus_ is alive. The _traitor_ had leapt right into the Rebellion’s arms, along with everything he knows about the Empire and everyone who works within it, every project and operation and clandestine meeting—such vital, vital information and it’ll all end up with them, with those _rebels_.

And hadn’t she given him the means to do it? Hadn’t she just _let him?_

She lets out a low, desperate laugh. She can practically feel Thrawn’s hands clamping around her neck, squeezing the life out of her body. What was the point of surviving that battle—what was the point of destroying just one lowly rebel base—when she had failed?

 


	10. Coffee Shop AU – Normal

They’d been given a choice when they returned: Join the rebellion, continue the fight, keep Galen’s memory alive—or leave, settle somewhere safe, and try to avoid the war raging all around. And before the blood had dried, before the bruises and memories could fade, they’d made their decision.

And Cassian still can’t believe it.

“You were actually serious about opening a caf shop,” he says to Jyn as they walk down the crowded street, his expression as flat as his voice.

She grins at him, not showing her teeth. “When am I not, Cassian?” she asks more rhetorically than anything, but he still shakes his head.

“Well, when you said, _Hey, Cassian, let’s round up the group, leave the Rebellion, and go to some Outer Rim backwater and open a caf shop_ , I thought you weren’t.”

Jyn scrunches her nose. “You sound like Kay-Tu.”

Next to Cassian, Kay-Tu huffs. “I’m going to assume that was a compliment,” he says.

They soon reach the storefront, a small wedge of wall smashed between two larger buildings, and the first word that comes to Cassian’s mind when he sees it is _alley_. (And now that he thinks about it, when Chirrut had been describing the place Jyn had chosen for a goddamn caf shop, he’d said, “It looks like shit,” and laughed. Cassian shouldn’t have expected anything beyond _alley_.)

But Jyn seems almost happy when she unlocks the door—with a _key_ —and flings the door wide open. This might be the first normal thing she’s ever been a part of—no Imperial officers ripping her family apart, no blaster in her hand, no running and running and running—and Cassian realizes that this, too, is his first step into a life he might have had on Fest so many years ago. So even if, in Chirrut’s words, the place looks like shit; even if the door unlocks with a forged-from-the-earth _key_ ; even if he still can’t believe it, he smiles as Jyn turns back to them and says, “Welcome to the Kyber Kup, boys.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kay-Tu turns to Cassian. "We're not _really_ going to keep that name, are we?"


	11. To Catch a Cold

Luke sneezes violently, knocking what might be the thinnest blanket in the entire galaxy off one of his shoulders. “Oh god,” he mumbles miserably, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself and shivering. “Why is Hoth so f-f-freaking c-cold?”

Everyone else in the command room stops their discussion to look at him. He sniffles.

“Commander Skywalker,” General Rieekan says with a sigh, and Luke can tell even without the Force that he’s _this_ close to rolling his eyes at him. “As I said before, you’re free to sit this meeting out and rest in your—”

“No,” Luke quickly says. “N-no, thank you, but I”—a sneeze—“need to”—another sneeze—“be—” He shoves his face in the blanket and sneezes again, sounding not unlike an allergic Hutt. He moans in pain.

General Bygar raises an eyebrow as Rieekan shakes his head. “Commander—”

“Luke,” Leia says gently. She glances at Rieekan, who nods and defers this ridiculous matter to her. “Luke,” she repeats, moving around the holotable toward him, and he can feel the collective _oh, ew, gross_ of the officers when she puts a hand on his arm. “You’re sick. You’ve _been_ sick ever since we came to Echo Base, and right now, your only priority is to recover.”

“B-but Leia, I’m t-t-totally f-f-f-f-f-f—”

“No, you’re not,” she cuts in firmly, then soothes it with a small smile. “You need to rest, Luke. The Rebellion will survive whether you attend this one meeting or not. It’s okay.”

Luke sniffs, loudly, and nods. “Okay, Leia. Th-thank you,” he says gratefully, and sneezes on her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jesus, luke


	12. Regret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on "mystery of a thousand moons"

Help hadn’t come. Whatever cure Anakin and Obi-Wan had searched for lies lost among the moons of the angels, gripped in the unforgiving hand of misfortune. It will never come, and if it does, it will simply be too late.

Jar Jar knows he’s going to die here. He sees it in the faces of the others—blue, once a color of life provided in abundance in the seas and skies of Naboo, creeps through their veins and meanders through their skin, tracing out innumerable paths of death and decay. He may end up like them, watching helplessly as this blue carves into him; his EVA suit will eventually deplete itself of oxygen, and by that point he would have little choice but to breathe diseased, toxic air or suffocate. Or he may, more likely than not, die of thirst long before air becomes a concern. Either way, the death promised him will be a slow and arduous trudge toward eternal rest.

But the one part of this that he regrets, that he can only pray against, is the fact that he can’t leave. As much as dying scares him, as much as the thought of simply _not existing_ fills him with a panic unlike any other, the idea that he will do so while staring at the cold, blank wall of a bunker frustrates him. He’d rather see the blue of the sky than the blue of his death; he’d rather feel the wind in the breeze than the stagnant air in his helmet; he’d rather lie in the grass, listening to the rush of water than lie in a base, listening to fading breathing. He’d rather be out there, enjoying the simplest joys of life than in here, stuck, and trapped in his own coffin.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just... why would you make the comic relief character suffer like this
> 
> why, filoni


	13. Ace Attorney AU – Too Bad You Can’t Revisualize Yet

“Objection!” Rey shouts, slamming her hands on the desk. “How can you know for sure that the defendant is, as you claim, a traitor?!”

FN-2199 puts his hands on his hips and scoffs. “Um, because he _defected?_ Because he literally left one side to join the other _opposing_ side? It’s the actual textbook definition of being a traitor, lady!” he shouts, hitting the witness stand with a fist. “Your _co-counsel_ even testified to that! And can the defendant of the trial even _be_ the defense’s co-counsel?!”

From the judge’s seat, Leia nods. “Well, that _is_ the actual textbook definition of being a traitor,” she says. “And your co-counsel did testify about doing exactly what a textbook definition of a traitor would, defense.”

Rey smiles sheepishly and rubs the back of her neck as Finn hides behind the bench. “Oh, really?” she says with a small laugh. “I actually haven’t used a dictionary in a while, so…”

Kylo Ren smugly taps the side of his head with a finger. “And this is why we don’t allow amateurs in the courtroom, Your Honor,” he says, a stupid grin on his equally stupid face. “You can’t defend a criminal if you don’t even know the definition of the crime he committed.”

“I don’t normally agree with you, prosecution,” Leia says, “but on this, I do. Penalty!”

Rey sighs as one of her two exclamation points explodes. “Maybe I deserved that,” she says.

“And maybe _I_ should’ve hired a different attorney,” Finn mumbles on the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new theory: snoke is actually manfred von karma


	14. Lyra/Galen, Krennic/Galen – Willful Ignorance

There’s something wrong with the way Krennic _is_ around Galen. Lyra knows he’s expending every resource at his disposal to take him away from her—that’s obvious, considering all his talk about “his work” and “his legacy” and all the _good_ they could do together, can’t you just _feel_ it, Galen?—but for some reason, in some deep part of her mind, she knows that the work and the legacy and the _good_ Krennic hides his intentions behind is only half of what he wants. There’s something else he’s working toward, some other variable he’s snuck into the equation, and she isn’t sure if the conclusion she’s rapidly coming to is one she wants to accept.

She sees it, this something, in Krennic’s smile when it turns to Galen. She sees it in his eyes when their gazes meet. She hears it in his words when he speaks to him, like Galen’s the only person who could possibly matter to Krennic more than himself. She sees it in his touch when he rests his hands on Galen’s shoulders or arms, his grip more like a caress against clothed skin.

And she sees it when he looks at _her_ —his mouth twisting at a corner when he smiles at her, his eyes dissecting her, his flattery poisoned by the unshakeable feeling that he wonders why Galen has chosen her, why Galen lets her _be_ in his presence when everything he could ever want, could ever need, could ever ask for had been here long before she arrived.

She refuses to consider if he’s right. She refuses to give him even that miniscule advantage in this game he’s dragged them into—but sometimes she doubts, and sometimes, during quiet, whispered conversations after dark, she thinks she can hear that something when Galen talks about Krennic, when he talks about their work and everything Krennic’s done for him and the _good_ they’re going to accomplish together—

She stops there, as she always does, before she can face the conclusion she will have to eventually. Because she can live in a reality where Krennic wants to steal away every part of Galen he can reach—she can fight that as long as she breathes—but she can’t live in one where he might succeed.

 


	15. Kay-Tu Is at Least an Eight

“Cassian, do other organics typically find you attractive?” Kay-Tu asks.

Cassian glances at the recently ex-Imperial security droid who’s asking him if he is, of all things, a ten in most people’s books. “Yes, I guess so,” he says slowly, trying to gauge Kay’s intentions. “Why?”

Kay-Tu shrugs, keeping his photoreceptors on the blur of hyperspace in front of them. “Just wondering.”

There’s a silence then. Cassian checks the ship’s fuel levels. He’s about to say that Kay was right, they _should_ have made a stop before this second jump, but Kay preemptively cuts him off with a, “You know, I’m considered quite attractive for a KX droid.”

Cassian stares at him. “Okay,” he finally says, and then shuts his mouth; he’s not stupid enough to actually say something like, _But don’t you all look the same?_

“You’re thinking that we all look the same, aren’t you?” Kay exclaims, sounding rather offended. “Well, Cassian Jeron Andor, I’ll have you know that attractiveness isn’t _only_ determined by physical qualities.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassian says almost grudgingly, but it’s enough to make Kay sigh instead of lecture more. He clears his throat. “I, uh… I didn’t know droids _had_ a concept of attractiveness.”

“Oh, we don’t,” Kay says. He looks back at Cassian, and Cassian suspects that if he could, Kay would have the biggest shit-eating grin on his face right now. “I was joking.”

Cassian just nods. Sighs. Says, “Right, right. Of course,” and he wonders if Kay’s personality change will be permanent right as the ship runs out of fuel.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> should've made that stop, cass


	16. Jakku, Tatooine’s Shitty Little Brother

Jakku is a planet of decay. It’s as though the omnipresent sand breaks everything down, scrapes away anything left unguarded, gets into joints and cracks and _minds_ until there’s simply nothing left. Weathered faces, rusting droids, and the empty expanse of the desert all tell Rey the same story: The first step you take on Jakku is the instant hope dies.

She’s thought about leaving, of course. She, like so many others trapped here, has wondered at the ships coming in from every corner of the galaxy, imagined the stories of their pilots and passengers, fantasized about the moment she boards one of those exotic ships and soars away from this desolate world. And she always, in her fantasy of that moment, knows the people who emerge from the ship—sometimes a yacht, sometimes a shuttle, sometimes even a starfighter—and take her away. They embrace her in every version of it, their arms wrapping tightly and protectively around her, and even if she can’t imagine their faces or their scents or the timbres of their voices when they say, “You’re safe now,” she knows that they will, somehow, feel as familiar to her as the heat of Jakku.

So she stays. She takes the sand that wants to break her and dons it as armor, lets it form a shell that spares her from the decay that surrounds her. She gazes at the ships and listens to the stories and wonders which ones will match her family’s the most. She never bends to Jakku’s will, never weighs herself down with the complacency of depression it crushes everyone and everything with, and she makes herself the last vestige of hope on the planet.

 


	17. Kaeden/Ahsoka – There’s a First Time for Everything

She’s never had time for romance, really. She’d been too young to even conceive of the idea when she became a Jedi youngling, and once she entered the Temple, the very concept of romance turned into an entirely foreign, unfamiliar one.  She supposes now, considering the surprising number of Jedi who’d broken this most basic tenet of the Code, she could have hypothetically pursued a relationship with… someone, but the desire to had rarely, if ever, occurred to her; she’d been too preoccupied with the war, with all the responsibility that came with leading soldiers and being a soldier to seriously consider it, and that was something she’d passed on to Ashla when her time had come.

But she can feel Kaeden’s presence now, standing behind her at a respectful, uncertain distance, a sensation not unlike a prickling ball of nervousness pushing at the back of her mind. It’s also a sensation of warmth, though, a feeling of tenderness in spite of the last few days’ events that slowly envelops her through the Force, and she has to smile as she turns around to face her.

Kaeden smiles back when their gazes meet, the nervousness reaching a fever pitch in the air. She can tell that there are so many things Kaeden wants to say, a multitude of thoughts she wants to transform into words, but all that comes out of her mouth is a breathy, sudden, “Hi.”

“Hi,” she says back, and it feels like a new beginning.

 


	18. Zare/Ezra – Reunion

It’s been what feels like years—or entire lifetimes—but Ezra’s still got his cheeky grin and the words, “Did you miss me?” on his tongue. _That_ pulls Zare back to an academy on a backwater planet, back to his desperate search for his sister, back to a life almost left incomplete, and he blinks; the Ezra who stands in front of him—hair shorn, scars on his face, worldly aura of someone who’s seen some shit—is very different from the one who’d haphazardly broken in and out of the Imperial hierarchy.

Different, even, from the one who’d helped save Dhara.

But it’s not a _bad_ different, and Zare laughs and says, “You ask that every time we meet,” because he can’t quite bring himself to reply with a, “Yes.”

 


End file.
